Abstract
Scholars have devoted significant attention to the issue of incarcerated parents, and a separate body of research has examined the representation of crime and offenders in the media. In this study, I contribute to research on incarcerated parents and on media portrayals of offenders by examining the role of gender in US newspaper representations of incarcerated parents over the past three decades. The findings suggest that the difficulties of parenting behind bars and the intergenerational consequences of incarceration are common themes in newspaper accounts of both mothers and fathers in prison. Findings also reveal evidence of a ‘mothering discourse’ that emphasizes the importance of the mother–child relationship in accounts of inmate mothers in particular. These findings are interpreted by drawing on theoretical literature regarding family ideology, parenting discourses, and the ideological nature of the media.
Introduction
Criminologists have paid extensive attention to the issue of incarcerated parents, with researchers focusing especially on the role of mothering from behind bars (Celinska and Siegel, 2010; Enos, 2001; Ferraro and Moe, 2003) and on the intergenerational and collateral consequences of parental imprisonment (Comfort, 2007; Foster and Hagan, 2007; Hagan and Dinovitzer, 1999). A separate body of research has focused on the representation of offenders in the media, with an emphasis on the role of gender in these representations (Gado, 2007; Humphries, 2011). In this article, I contribute to these two bodies of research by analyzing the portrayal of incarcerated mothers and fathers in articles appearing in US newspapers and news wires over the last three decades.
The more specific goal of this study is to explore the extent to which newspaper depictions of incarcerated parents are framed in gendered terms. Given the widespread belief in a ‘motherhood ideal’ that requires mothers in particular to invest a high amount of their time and energy in their child (Griffith and Smith, 1987) as well as prior literature documenting the media’s ability to reproduce dominant gender ideologies (Anastasio and Costa, 2004; Gado, 2007), there is reason to believe that the content of newspaper articles on incarcerated mothers and fathers will differ. I thus explore in this study the ways in which gender is manifested in how incarcerated mothers and fathers are presented. Due to the wealth of literature on the ideological nature of the media (Cohen, 1972; Hall, 1978), I also investigate the related question of whether newspaper representations of incarcerated mothers and fathers are consistent with the scholarly literature on these populations and/or with literature on media portrayals of crime and offenders. To answer these questions, I draw on theoretical research on family ideology as well as the media as an ideological institution to examine whether the findings suggest that newspaper representations of inmate parents reflect discourses related to ‘appropriate’ parenting.
Examining representations of inmate parents is an important task because it can shed light on the extent to which gender norms are reflected and reinforced in newspapers intended for public consumption. Additionally, as Surette (1994: 133) has argued, the messages about crime and offending that the public internalizes from the mass media provide ‘knowledge that becomes permanently incorporated into our socially constructed worlds’. Anastasio and Costa (2004) have similarly argued that the issues that the public perceives as significant are likely to be the very ones that are the focus of news media. How inmate parents are represented in newspaper accounts might thus both affect and reflect how they are viewed by mainstream society. For example, the depiction of incarcerated parents as ‘deviant’ may reinforce norms regarding appropriate parenting by sharpening the symbolic boundaries between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parents (Erikson, 1966). From a neo-Durkheimian perspective, therefore, negative depictions of incarcerated mothers and fathers (like other messages regarding deviant behavior) serve the purpose of demarcating moral boundaries and thus reproducing mainstream notions of normative family ideologies (Ben-Yehuda, 1990; Erikson, 1966; Rock, 1998). The negative portrayal of incarcerated parents could thus ‘convey important symbolic representations of the cultural, ideological and social order’ as well as sustain these representations (Rock, 1998: 588).
Foucault (1975) has also argued that discipline in society can be achieved through the imposition of precise norms (‘normalization’), a process by which groups are labeled as normal or abnormal. The media have been documented as a powerful institution responsible for the communication of norms (Gunther et al., 2006; Yanovitzky and Stryker, 2001); and since the media can be understood as one of many ‘judges of normality’ that extend beyond the carceral system (Foucault, 1977: 304), using a ‘technology of power’, the media may reinforce notions of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ parenting by communicating ideological family norms. Naylor (2001: 155), for example, has argued that criminal mothers are depicted as failing at mothering, thus highlighting the disjunctions between the status ‘mother’ and normative understandings and expectations of mothering.
From a labeling perspective, the stigma of the ‘bad mother’ label stemming from perceptions of normative parenting can affect how society responds to inmate mothers (Paternoster and Iovanni, 1989). If newspaper accounts consistently condemn inmate mothers for failing to live up to a mothering discourse that demands that women place children at the center of their lives, public opinion regarding inmate mothers may be hardened. Moreover, society’s response to inmate mothers’ parenting practices might result in the mothers themselves internalizing the ‘bad mother’ label (Becker, 1963). Alternatively, if newspaper accounts describe the systemic disadvantages these women face, the reports may have the positive effects of raising awareness of women prisoners’ social and material difficulties and offsetting the stigma that comes with being an incarcerated mother (Enos, 2001). With regard to inmate fathers, newspaper accounts representing these men may either reinforce or challenge commonly held stereotypes about ‘deadbeat’ dads and absent fathers (Blankenhorn, 1995; Orloff and Monson, 2002). Finally, given that researchers (Garland, 2001; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005) examining the era of mass incarceration in the US have argued that public discourse was a major reason for the shift toward more punitive attitudes about criminals, it is important to assess how prisoners are now being portrayed to the public.
Although newsworthiness is likely rooted in what the public is interested in (Anastasio and Costa, 2004), Doyle (2006) has cautioned sociologists not to assume that media audiences passively internalize the messages to which they are exposed. I therefore explore the more focused question of whether gender is a crucial ‘ingredient’ in the portrayal of incarcerated parents. To the extent that the media reflect and reproduce family rhetoric, it is possible that the themes that emerge in this study are more reflective of family ideologies than the realities of the men and women described in the articles (Haney and March, 2003). Nevertheless, like Haney and March (2003: 463), I am convinced that there is ‘analytical utility [in] deconstructing how family relations are imagined and represented in everyday life’. It is to this end that I highlight the extent to which socially constructed norms regarding mothering and fathering are reflected in newspaper portrayals of inmate parents.
Literature review
The US experienced an era of mass incarceration over the last few decades, with its penal population increasing six-fold between 1972 and 2000 (Pettit and Western, 2004). With the rising number of offenders being incarcerated, the risk of parental incarceration among US children has increased tremendously (Wildeman, 2009). In 1999, over half of both state and federal prisoners had children under the age of 18 (Mumola, 2000), and between 1990 and 1999, the number of children with incarcerated mothers rose by 98 percent. Given the gravity of these statistics, parental incarceration has emerged in recent decades as a unique form of childhood disadvantage, especially for children of color (Pettit and Western, 2004; Wildeman, 2009).
For obvious reasons, then, criminological literature has focused a great deal on the issue of incarcerated parents (Celinska and Siegel, 2010; Enos, 2001; Western and Wildeman, 2009). Scholars in this area have highlighted the difficulties associated with parenting behind bars and the coping strategies that parents employ when confronting pending or actual separation from their children (Celinska and Siegel, 2010; Enos, 2001). Edin et al. (2004) also concluded that incarceration adversely affects the father–child bond for fathers who were involved with their children prior to incarceration; for fathers who were not engaged in their children’s lives, however, the period behind bars can be a time for reflection and self-improvement.
Despite this potentially positive impact of incarceration, researchers examining the intergenerational consequences of incarceration have concluded that the children of imprisoned parents can face higher risks of abuse, neglect, and social exclusion (Foster and Hagan, 2007). Finally, Comfort (2005) proposed the concept of ‘secondary prisonization’ to refer to the process by which inmates’ kin absorb the norms of the prison culture because of their prolonged exposure to the penal system, during which time they internalize the severe humiliation and frustration that they experience. Thus, while incarceration may serve as a time for self-improvement for fathers who were previously uninvolved in their children’s lives, the negative consequences of incarceration on men’s families are numerous, and many are severe. In this article, I will examine the extent to which these collateral consequences of incarceration are discussed in newspaper representations of inmate fathers, and whether they appear equally salient in representations of inmate mothers.
To the extent that women prisoners’ lives have been examined in criminological research, many scholars have focused almost exclusively on issues of motherhood and imprisonment. This focus is unsurprising insofar as a greater number of mothers than fathers lived with – and were the primary caregivers for – their children before their incarceration (Hagan and Dinovitzer, 1999; Kennedy, 2011; Mumola, 2000). Researchers investigating inmate mothers have examined how these women manage the motherhood identity and how they demonstrate fitness as mothers. Importantly, while studies on incarcerated fathers have placed more emphasis on the adverse collateral consequences of paternal incarceration for children (Western and Wildeman, 2009; Wildeman, 2009), scholars studying inmate mothers have focused far more on the emotional difficulties that women face in trying to mother from prison (Celinska and Siegel, 2010; Enos, 2001). This points to the central position of the mothering role for women even while they are incarcerated – a position not always matched by the fathering role in the case of incarcerated men. As Kruttschnitt (2010) has noted, the stigma of the inmate label continues to be worse for women, and it is particularly severe for inmate mothers.
This article will explore the extent to which newspaper reports on inmate mothers (like the scholarly literature) emphasize the difficulties that mothers face when separated from their children. Given the difference in the degree to which these emotional difficulties have emerged in the research on men’s versus women’s incarceration, it will also explore whether there are similar differences in the dimensions of parental incarceration that are emphasized in newspaper reports of inmates mothers and fathers.
Family ideology and definitions of mothering and fathering
Smith (1993: 51–52) argued that the standard North American family may be seen as an ‘ideological code’, a ‘schema that replicates its organization in multiple and various sites’. The standard North American family (SNAF), according to Smith, consists of an adult man in paid employment and an adult woman who may also earn an income, but whose primary responsibility is to the care of the household, husband, and children. In this dominant family model, the couple may also be parents of children. A key feature of the standard North American family model is its universal nature: ‘it is not identifiable with any particular family; it applies to any’ (Smith, 1993: 52).
A consequence of the universal nature of the dominant family model is that families that fall outside this model are often disproportionately exposed to state interference (Kennedy, 2011). For single, gay, and lesbian parents, state interference may be manifested in its failure to recognize their family unit. For families with incarcerated parents, the state can threaten to terminate parental rights, which Kennedy (2011: 83) argues ‘reflects adherence to an exclusionary family ideal that fails to recognize the reality of fractured families and raises significant privacy and liberty concerns’. All this points to the extent to which the universal nature of the standard North American family ideology fails to capture the diversity of families in modern America.
Dominant family ideologies also lay the foundation for ‘prescriptive discourses on motherhood and mothering’ (Enos, 2001: 23). These discourses reflect assumptions about the role of mothers in the larger social context and mothering as a practice, an ideology that Griffith and Smith (1987) label the ‘mothering discourse’. The mothering discourse, as described by Enos (2001: 23), is reflected in messages that convey that: (1) mothers are completely engaged with their children, and this work is fully absorbing to mothers; (2) mothering takes priority over all other work and is the ultimate source of fulfillment for women; (3) mothers are all-powerful, and the future well-being of their children is in their hands; (4) only mothers –whether biological or adoptive – can ‘mother’; (5) mothers have sufficient time and resources to do mothering; (6) mothers perform the emotion work necessary for their families to be happy; and (7) with respect to mothering, race and class do not matter much.
It is important to note that public definitions of mothering and motherhood have historically shifted in meaningful and often contradictory ways (Ehrenreich and English, 2005). Beginning in the 1920s, for example, mothering and motherhood was no longer modeled on standards set by industrial conditions emphasizing discipline and efficiency; rather, mothering became a means to attain private fulfillment, and the criteria for good mothering shifted from discipline to permissiveness. Feminist scholars have argued, however, that mothers did not enjoy the freedom that marked this era of consumption. Instead, these scholars believe that mothers were required to sacrifice themselves for the freedom of their children and, secondarily, of their husbands (Ehrenreich and English, 2005). By the 1960s, however, the ‘single woman’ ideal had become popular in mainstream media, and housewives occupied the lower position on the status hierarchy that was once occupied by single women. Unmarried and childless women at this time were portrayed in the media as fun, sexy, and fulfilled (Ehrenreich and English, 2005). In this model of freedom and self-indulgence, there was little room for children, and the media no longer portrayed women primarily as mothers and wives. Despite this surge in women’s independence and the disruption of the tie between motherhood and femininity, by the early 21st century, women not only continued to make less money than their male counterparts, but they were also still doing the majority of the housework, child care, shopping, and family management (Ehrenreich and English, 2005: 352). And while the majority of women today strive for marriage and motherhood, attaining these goals while simultaneously upholding a professional career has become increasingly difficult.
The media reflect the conflicting standards of womanhood today by, for example, providing them with a vast array of books that teach them how to both compete with a man in the labor market and how to be a ‘domestic goddess’ (Ehrenreich and English, 2005: 358). Additionally, parents derive their understandings of how a ‘good’ parent and child should behave from media representations of families, which highlight how parenting practices are socially constructed (Francis-Connolly, 2003). Despite shifts in definitions of femininity and corresponding shifts in definitions of motherhood and mothering, therefore, children remain a key feature of young women’s lives.
In addition to changes in mothering discourses, family ideologies more generally have shifted in recent decades. The rise of same-sex relationships, for example, has led to debates about the desirability and importance of marriage for same-sex couples (Hull, 2006). While some argue that assimilation into the dominant family model (which requires marriage) should be the ultimate goal of gay and lesbian activism, others have advocated a ‘queer’ ethic centered around resisting and transforming dominant understandings of love, intimacy, the family, and the state (Hull, 2006: 79).
In addition to the challenges that gay and lesbian activists pose to the dominant family model, recent decades have seen increases in divorce, cohabitation, and children being raised in single-parent households (Rainwater and Smeeding, 2004) that have all contributed to rapid and significant shifts in family structures as well as media depictions of the family ideal. In an examination of popular magazines and social science journals, Usdansky (2009) concluded that critical depictions of divorce plummeted between 1900 and 1998 because of an absence of normative debate surrounding the issue. Depictions of non-marital childbearing, however, continued to be as critical by 1998 as they were at the start of the century, which Usdansky argues is a reflection of Americans’ acknowledgment of single-parent families as a reality but not an ideal. As such, with the changing landscape of US family structure have come corresponding shifts in media depictions of modern US families, although portrayals of the family ideal continue to exclude non-conformist family structures such as single-parent families.
Enos (2001) noted that in spite of the fact that ideals about ‘good’ mothers are historically located as described, as well as class-specific, women who do not have the resources or ability to mother in a way that is consistent with the dominant discourse struggle to maintain their identities and practices as mothers. Scholars have pointed to the ways in which women who mother unconventionally are labeled as ‘bad mothers’ and are often pushed to conform to dominant parenting ideologies (Haney, 2010). By emphasizing a binary opposition between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering (Cleeton, 2001), the media play a significant role in the portrayal of ‘deviant’ parents who do not practice parenting within the framework of mainstream family discourses. Moreover, scholars (LaFia et al., 1995) have argued that young women are influenced by the media in their understanding of motherhood as an all-encompassing task. Of key importance in the media’s representation of mothers is their lack of attention to the constraints of women’s class and structural position.
Enos further argued that the concept of a mothering discourse is relevant when examining the lives of inmate mothers in particular because these mothers conform to conventional mothering norms despite the fact that many lack the resources to perform mothering as it is prescribed by the mothering discourse. Indeed, motherhood is a central identity for women in prison who derive hope and strength from the possibility of reunification with their children (Celinska and Siegel, 2010; Enos, 2001; Ferraro and Moe, 2003). This study shifts the focus away from an analysis solely of women inmates’ perspectives, highlighting instead the extent to which newspaper reports about inmate mothers reflect a mothering discourse that emphasizes the central place of children in inmate mothers’ lives and the importance of the mothering role.
Importantly, the ‘ideological code’ of the standard North American family unit also has implications for fathering and paternal identity. Haney and March (2003) have argued that policymakers engaged in welfare reform and discursive politics of paternity define biologically and materially, rather than socially and emotionally. Some policy makers argue that the ‘fatherhood problem’ (Blankenhorn, 1995) will be solved by encouraging men to marry the mothers of their children; others argue that fathers should be taught to become consistent wage-earners, thereby increasing their value on the marriage market while simultaneously ensuring that they continue to provide financial support for their children.
In Haney and March’s study, however, low-income women viewed fatherhood in entirely different terms – they emphasized function over form. To these women, biological ties and material assistance from fathers of their children do not naturally justify the fatherhood identity. The women instead argue that what makes a man a ‘father’ is the social and emotional connection that men have with children. As such, the definitions of fatherhood communicated by policy makers to the public differ drastically from the more grounded definitions of low-income mothers. Like the rhetoric of policy makers, newspaper representations of incarcerated fathers are important because they too shed light on how fatherhood is defined for public consumption.
Haney and March (2003) also argue that the ‘gender revolution’ in the US did not affect only women; men were affected by changes in understandings and definitions of gender as well. Specifically, just as women now define their work and home life, the fatherhood identity hinges on more than a man’s ability to earn an income. Fathers are increasingly expected to be socially and emotionally involved with their children, and their inability or lack of desire to do this affects their self-image as fathers. This study investigates whether this definition of fatherhood as constituting an emotional bond is reflected in newspaper representations of incarcerated fathers who, by definition, are unable to be involved in the daily lives of their children.
Media representations of offenders
Media scholars have posited two distinct models to explain ‘newsworthiness’, the criteria by which news producers determine which events should be presented as ‘news’: the ‘market model’ posits that public opinion shapes what constitutes news, and that journalists simply objectively gather and report these events. On the other hand, the ‘manipulative model’ posits that news agencies’ owners – rather than the general public – determine newsworthiness, and the media deliberately distort reality to suit the needs of dominant social institutions. Surette (2010) has argued that crime news may be best understood with reference to an ‘organizational model'. This model takes a middle ground between the aforementioned models in positing that factors related to the organizational needs of news agencies determine which news is reported, which makes news reports inherently subjective, even when they are not ideological.
Conclusions regarding media effects continue to be mixed (Reiner, 2002), although criminologists have for several decades discussed the media’s role in portrayals of ‘crime waves’ (Fishman, 1978) that heighten public concern with crime and propel moral panics (Cohen, 1972). Importantly, there is a strong ideological component in the media’s representation of crime waves whereby ‘news organizations both invoke and reproduce prevailing conceptions of “serious crime”’ (Fishman, 1978: 531). Moreover, since most forms of mass media are commercial enterprises geared toward maximizing profit, media organizations have an economic interest in attracting as wide an audience as possible, a function that crime shows and crime news serve well (Sacco, 2005).
A large body of literature has focused on the power of the media to shape both public opinion on crime and criminals (Anastasio and Costa, 2004; Dowler et al., 2006) as well as how offenders are treated by the court system (Surette, 1999). Scholars have argued that the media are closely involved in the social construction of crime, and that they breed fear in the public by using sensationalistic accounts of serious crime that are not always representative of the true nature of offending (Fishman, 1978; Reiner, 2002; Surette, 1994). As Cohen’s (1972) theory of moral panics posited, the media do not merely report, but construct social reactions to perceived ‘deviance’ (Laughey, 2007). With regard to women offenders, Kruttschnitt and Gartner (2005) have described the ways in which the media sustained an explosion in attention to drug-addicted babies, and thus supported politicians’ efforts to criminalize drug-using women in California by raising public panic about offending women. The extent to which the media can shape public attitudes and policies through their communication of what constitutes ‘bad’ mothering reflects its political nature.
Although the focus of this study is not on the seriousness of crime depicted by the mass media, Surette’s and Cohen’s arguments draw attention to the ways in which messages about the social (and criminal) world that do not necessarily track objective reality are communicated to the public (Dowler et al., 2006). The mass media, for example, have been held responsible for the transmission of ‘crime myths’ that, despite their temporal nature, have repercussive effects because of the extent to which they shape public opinion regarding crime and criminals. Indeed, scholars (Cohen, 1972; McCormick, 2010) have argued that crime is constructed and often distorted to communicate specific messages about criminal offending and offenders.
While some theorists have focused on the media’s role in the social construction of crime, others have taken an even more critical perspective (Hall, 1978) that underscores the media’s role as an ‘ideological state apparatus’ (Althusser, 1971). Although the individual organizations involved in the mass media are distinct, these organizations function together to produce a powerful political apparatus that is ‘largely concerned with the reproduction of dominant ideologies’ (Gurevitch et al., 1982: 107). The media thus serve as ‘the ideational counterpart to the repressive apparatus of the police, judiciary and armed forces through which the ruling order is ultimately sustained’ (Curran, 1991: 36). From an Althusserian perspective, the power of the media lies less in an imposed false consciousness, and more in the ‘unconscious categories through which conditions are represented and experienced’ (Gurevitch et al., 1982: 19). As such, in addition to (or perhaps instead of) simply reflecting public attitudes and concerns, a more critical perspective on the role of the media requires recognition of its ability to reproduce particular ideologies. This is particularly important because, as Hall (1978) has demonstrated, the set of beliefs reproduced and reinforced by the media are those of the dominant class. Abercrombie and Turner (1978) have argued that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ suggests that the incorporation of dominant beliefs curbs political dissent. In communicating and reproducing these beliefs, the media therefore play an important role in preventing resistance to these ideologies. I draw on this notion of the media as an ideological state apparatus to examine whether and how dominant family models are reproduced in newspaper reports of inmate parents, and whether these parents are presented as ‘deviants’ in the context of normative parenting practices.
Regarding the role of gender in the media, Dowler et al. (2006: 841) have noted that gender is a ‘very important ingredient in the portrayal of crime’, with the media frequently blaming the victimization of women on women themselves. Women are moreover portrayed as victims more frequently than are men, but their newsworthiness is tied to the women’s social status: women are at once portrayed as innocent and blameworthy, a contradiction that is rooted, Dowler et al. (2006: 841) argue, ‘in patriarchal notions of femininity and gender stereotypes’. Other scholars have made even stronger claims, arguing that ‘whatever the gauge, women fare badly at the hands of the mass media’ (Barak, 1995: 28). Specifically, researchers have concluded that women in the mass media are consistently pushed into subordinate roles of sex objects, wives, mothers, and crime victims, and that the media repeatedly fail to recognize the agency and self-determining nature of women.
Ultimately, as Surette (1994: 135) argues, ‘the mass media play a crucial role in social construction of reality because knowledge of many social phenomena is obtained solely through the media rather than through direct experience’. For this reason, and because of the ever-increasing expansion of media that individuals have access to, the study of media portrayals of crime has broadened in the last few decades to examine topics ranging from representations of crime in the news to depictions of criminals in reality crime shows (Dowler et al., 2006). The expansion of crime-related TV programs has become sufficiently widespread that media analysts have coined the term ‘infotainment’ to refer to how reality television contributes to the construction and specialization of crime and deviance in the media (Brants, 1998). This study shifts the focus away from criminal offending in general and toward prisoners specifically to examine how newspapers present inmate parents to the public. Based on widespread theoretical arguments that the media distort portrayals of crime and criminals to breed moral panics, we might expect inmate parents to be presented as dangerous and deserving of strict social control. Furthermore, given the importance of gender in news coverage, newspaper reports on inmate mothers may emphasize their subordinate roles as wives, caregivers, and victims, while highlighting the agentic, economic, and criminal behavior of inmate fathers (Barak, 1995; Dowler et al., 2006; Reiner, 2002). I explore these possibilities below. Moreover, given the research on the ideological role of the media (Cohen, 1972; Hall, 1978), I examine whether there are indeed elements of a moral panic associated with ‘bad parenting’, and because of the historic importance of gender in shaping public opinions regarding offenders (Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005), I investigate whether the newspaper reports condemn inmate mothers in particular for failing to practice appropriate mothering.
Methodology
Data for this study were obtained using the Lexis Nexis database, which I used to search for articles in 693 US newspapers and newswires containing the terms ‘incarcerated mother’, ‘incarcerated father’, ‘mother in prison’, and/or ‘father in prison’ in their headlines. The group from which these reports were obtained contained newspapers published in the US as well as wire services where more than 60 percent of the stories originate in the US.1 The search yielded 57, 11, 38, and 14 articles in the respective categories, ranging from years 1980 to 2011. I excluded a handful of these articles due to the content being insufficiently related to mothers/fathers in US prisons, despite the articles’ headlines. The final sample consists of 62 articles about inmate mothers and 39 articles about inmate fathers. The selected time range was retained specifically in order to explore qualitative differences over time in the content of newspaper portrayals of incarcerated parents during the era of mass incarceration and changing penal policies (Garland, 2001; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005). Given the number of reports and the complexity of the data, the time frame was also chosen as a means of organizing and categorizing the reports in a meaningful way based on the USA’s shifting penal landscape.
Like Dworkin and Wachs (2004), I focus on the ‘cultural assumptions’ underlying the text of media articles to ‘study up’ on dominant cultural ideologies regarding parenting. As Dworkin and Wachs note, this method is often used in grounded theoretical approaches that draw on textual analyses of media sources to critique hegemonic messages. I conducted inductive textual analyses of the data, beginning with initial open (line-by-line) coding to identify patterns of similarities and differences within the data. Here, I coded for the overall tone of the articles (e.g. emotional, factual, descriptive); the key actors in the article (e.g. mothers, fathers, children, grandparents); the crimes of the incarcerated parents (e.g. drug-related, child-related, violent); and gender-related language (e.g. ‘When I think about women having children and being in jail, that’s even worse.’). When coding for key actors in the article, I also coded for any references to incarcerated parents’ race (e.g. African-American, White, Hispanic, etc.) and class (e.g. references to inmate parents’ structural disadvantages, economic difficulties, intergenerational continuities in financial hardships, etc.) because of the wealth of criminological literature that has focused on race- and class-based inequalities in US punishment (Enos, 2001; Pettit and Western, 2004). Finally, in addition to comparing newspaper reports based on publication dates, to explore shifts in newspaper portrayals of incarcerated parents over time, I coded references to the effects of the incarceration boom that criminologists have documented extensively, specifically in the context of incarcerated parents (e.g. the rising numbers of parents behind bars, the long-term consequences of higher incarceration rates on children and families, the higher number of women imprisoned far from their homes, etc.).
Following the emergence of initial patterns, I conducted selective (focused) coding to strengthen and develop key emerging themes. The findings that are described in the results section represent the most common themes found in the articles based on my repeated analysis of the data.
In the following section, I describe in detail the main themes that emerged from the data. I first describe how representations of both incarcerated fathers and mothers made reference to the difficulties of parenting behind bars and to the intergenerational consequences of parental incarceration. Next, I outline the key themes that emerged in representations of incarcerated mothers: mothering and the mother–child bond; children as mothers’ sense of purpose; the equation of maternal incarceration with child incarceration; and prison as salvation. Finally, I describe two unique themes that emerged in representations of incarcerated fathers: the notion of fathers as serious criminals, and fathers as financial supporters.
Results
Although it can be argued that including articles from such a wide timeframe masks the numerous social changes in family, penal, and gender policies, this range was chosen to explore whether or not the representations of inmate parents changed through the course of the incarceration boom in the US. Interestingly, the findings did not reveal changes in portrayals of inmate parents based on the year in which the reports were published. Further in-depth analyses revealed that there were, however, qualitative differences in other elements of the reports, with reports during and after the boom emphasizing the tremendous growths in incarceration rates as well as the long-term consequences for parents, children, and communities of rising incarceration rates. Newspaper portrayals of incarcerated parents themselves, however, have remained remarkably similar over the course of the last few decades. Despite repeated mentions of higher incarceration rates and increased numbers of children growing up with incarcerated parents, the reports did not reflect the changing role of women in the labor force, for example, nor the role of the economy and politics in shaping penal policies that affect inmate parents. This finding underscores the power of the media, since it reveals the extent to which the media can selectively convey messages regarding changes in the political and social landscape.
Before proceeding with a presentation of the themes that emerged from the data, it is worth noting the far greater number of articles that had the terms ‘mother in prison’ or ‘incarcerated mother’ in their headlines compared to ‘father in prison’ or ‘incarcerated father’. If, as Anastasio and Costa (2004) argue, the issues emphasized in newspapers are the very same that the public is concerned with, then the greater number of articles on inmate mothers may reflect a stronger concern with the issue of incarcerated women who have children. As mentioned, however, it is important not to assume a perfect correlation between the interest of news reporting agencies and those of the general public. I thus investigate the content of the reports to gain a more well-rounded understanding of the role that gender plays.
Common themes in accounts of maternal and paternal incarceration
The challenge of parenting from behind bars: Distance and ownership
In articles about both incarcerated mothers and fathers, a major theme that emerged was that of the challenge of parenting while incarcerated. The reports emphasized two obstacles in particular that inmate parents faced: distance from their children and questions regarding ownership of their children. Newspaper reports of inmate parents pointed to the difficulties in maintaining parent–child bonds when parents are incarcerated far away from their homes: 13 percent of articles on incarcerated fathers and 34 percent of articles on incarcerated mothers referenced either or both the distance of incarcerated parents from their families and/or programs designed to assist children in visiting incarcerated parents. Although the literature on the collateral consequences of incarceration has revealed that women are more often incarcerated far away from their families than men (given the fewer number of women’s prisons) (Hagan and Dinovitzer, 1999; Kennedy, 2011), the newspaper articles did not emphasize the greater difficulties that women face in this regard.
Additionally, the articles on incarcerated mothers and fathers consistently referred to the issue of who gets ownership of children of incarcerated parents. Importantly, however, in most of the articles on incarcerated fathers that referenced custody, the mothers of the children had taken full responsibility for child rearing. Consistent with the literature on women’s incarceration, however, articles on incarcerated mothers referred to grandmothers – most often the incarcerated women’s mothers – raising the women’s children. In these articles there was very infrequent mention of the father of the children, and while seven articles about incarcerated mothers referred to the inmates’ mothers taking care of their children, only two articles made reference to an incarcerated woman’s child being raised by the child’s father. In one of these cases, the mother was described as ‘lucky’ for having a partner that would take over the role of primary giver during her incarceration. The discussion of the custody of children when parents are incarcerated is exemplified in the following quote: Alice Rivera of Hartford sits next to her 1-year-old grandson, Frankie. Her daughter, Vanessa, 18, Frankie’s mother, is serving time at York for selling drugs. ‘He calls me momma’, Rivera says. ‘He doesn’t know who his real mother is right now.’ Like Rivera, the other two grandmothers – who did not wish their names be used – are caring for their children’s children while their daughters do time. It is an all too common arrangement. (Hartford Courant, 10 May 1998)
Intergenerational consequences of incarceration
In addition to the difficulties of parenting behind bars, the intergenerational consequences of parental incarceration emerged repeatedly (over a dozen times in articles on incarcerated mothers and in 17 percent of the total sample) as a theme in the reports of inmate parents. While the articles were infused with personal stories and emotion (especially in the case of accounts of maternal incarceration), they stated in factual terms the intergenerational consequences of parental incarceration. In particular, the articles drew on policy-oriented and social science research to describe how children of incarcerated parents were more likely than other children to experience a series of negative life course outcomes, such as trauma, dropping out of high school, and especially imprisonment. This is reflected in the following quote: According to the justice institute, children with parents in prison have six times the risk of other children of eventually going to prison themselves. They are more likely to drop out of school and suffer higher rates of teen pregnancy. (Houston Chronicle, 20 October 1996)
Moreover, despite the fact that the scholarly literature has focused extensively on how racial minorities have been disproportionately affected by the prison boom (Kennedy, 2011; Mumola, 2000), race was absent in the newspaper accounts of inmate parents. This is particularly surprising given the extent to which researchers have noted the racially biased nature of crime depictions in the media (Barlow, 1998; Hurwitz and Peffley, 1997). It is possible that the inmates’ status as parents overshadows their racial status in newspaper reports on incarcerated parents. It is more likely, however, that the absence of race in the findings instead reflects an assumption that audiences are already aware of the racial nature of crime and punishment because of the emphasis on race in media depictions of offenders. It is also important to note that the LexisNexis database does not contain the photographs that often accompany newspaper articles, which is an unfortunate but unavoidable difficulty for researchers wishing to analyze a large sample of reports stemming from newspapers all over the country and ranging several decades in time. The photographs that accompanied the print reports may have revealed the race of the incarcerated parent population, thus making a description of the parents’ race unnecessary.2 Even in this case, however, a photograph of a member of a racial minority in the absence of a description of the problematic racial elements of punishment and incarceration displays an assumption that the photograph adequately captures what is ‘normal’ in the penal system. As such, neither race nor class emerged as significant elements in the depictions of incarcerated mothers and fathers, despite the extent to which scholars studying incarceration in the US have highlighted the significance of race and class in US punishment.
Next, I expand on the theme regarding the difficulties of parenting behind bars by examining the ways in which articles on maternal incarceration in particular emphasized more heavily the disruption of a mother–child relationship.
Themes in accounts of maternal incarceration
Mothering and the mother–child bond
The most consistent theme in the articles on incarcerated mothers pertained to the bond that mothers have with their children, and the centrality of the motherhood identity in the women’s lives. Unlike representations of incarcerated fathers, 40 percent of newspaper articles about incarcerated mothers contained emotion-laden language describing the mothers’ bonds with their children. The quotes below from various newspapers reveal the sympathetic light in which incarcerated mothers are presented, emphasizing the emotional difficulties involved in being an incarcerated mother: ‘I tried to do a portrait of my daughter and I just couldn’t break through’, Dellacroce [an incarcerated mother] said. ‘I would break out in tears.’ Instead, she did a portrait of a prisoner, looking out beyond the gates and crying. (Union Leader, 17 February 2008) I have found beauty in many things, but nothing so beautiful as you. Your smile, your eyes, your voice. The word ‘Mommy’ makes my heart flutter with love. (Virginian Pilot, 14 May 2000)
While some articles analyzed in this study depicted mothers struggling to maintain a bond with their children, others made reference to the resilience of the mother–child bond, as depicted in the following quote: ‘The children are just beautiful’, she [Amelie Bush, development director for the Girl Scouts visiting their mothers] said. ‘It didn’t matter how long it had been. The dynamics of mother and child took over’. (Dayton Daily News, 4 July 1995)
Importantly, whether referencing the strength of the mother–child bond or the disruption of this bond, incarcerated mothers were not presented as blameworthy or morally reprehensible. Scholars have noted that media representations of women offenders often portray them as requiring stringent social control (Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005). The phenomenon of parenting behind bars, however, appears to alter the focus of media portrayals of women offenders from panic-inducing to sympathy-inducing. Contrary to literature on the media’s role in public perceptions of ‘crime waves’, therefore, the reports in this study did not contain the elements that constitute moral panics about rising crime rates and dangerous offenders (Cohen, 1972; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005).
Whether or not the newspaper accounts reflect inmate mothers’ lived experiences is a separate question, since public discourses regarding parenting can differ from the realities of the lives they pertain to (Haney and March, 2003). The quotes from incarcerated women selected for inclusion in the newspapers may thus reflect the authors’ application of a mothering discourse in presentations of incarcerated women, rather than inmates’ actual conformity to this discourse. While it is impossible in this study to state conclusively which of these possibilities is true, the newspaper accounts contained strong evidence of prescriptive models of mothering. As will be discussed below, the extent to which children were presented as the mothers’ ‘reason to live’, is again reminiscent of the mothering discourse that Enos (2001) has described.
Perhaps more interesting than the evidence of a mothering discourse is the fact that the newspaper reports did not pathologize incarcerated mothers as might be predicted by the theoretical literature on the SNAF that notes that women who do not conform to the mothering discourse are vulnerable to the stigma of the ‘bad mother’ label. Although Enos (2001) has noted that incarcerated women struggle to fight the perception that they are bad mothers, the newspaper representations analyzed here portrayed these women as attempting to fulfill the motherhood role by showing a deep interest in and affection for their children. Despite evidence of a mothering discourse, therefore, the newspaper accounts did not condemn incarcerated mothers for being unable completely to conform to this discourse. The finding that inmate mothers’ parenting practices were not pathologized, however, should not be taken to reflect a wholly positive, sympathetic media perspective on these women. Rather, by portraying women as attempting to mother ‘better’, such a finding reflects the reproduction of dominant parenting practices that inmate mothers are often structurally unable to enact (Enos, 2001). The portrayal of inmate mothers as failing to attain normative parenting goals thus reinforces their status as ‘outsiders’ (Becker, 1963), despite the lack of explicit condemnation for these women in the newspaper reports.
Children as mothers’ sense of purpose
Related to the theme of mothering and the mother–child bond, newspaper accounts on incarcerated women frequently included quotations from women inmates describing their children as their reason for survival and their sole source of positivity, strength, and optimism. Ms. Stokes [an ex-inmate and volunteer at a program coordinating visits between inmate mothers and their children] breaks into a smile as she describes the anticipation of inmate mothers waiting to see their children on Wednesday nights. ‘All the women are pressing at the window looking for their children. When the children get out of the vans you can just see the joy that comes over their faces’, she says. ‘I know I lived for Wednesdays.’ (Christian Science Monitor, 16 June 1983) I know my history is bad. I’ve got 23 years of … addiction behind me. But I’ve got a life ahead of me. I love David [the mother’s son] with all my heart. He’s given me my strength, my sobriety, and a whole new life. (Los Angeles Times, 2 July 1995) If I ever lose her … she’s my life’, she said, crying. ‘That’s my daughter, my only child. If I could have seen it when I was not in here, I wouldn’t be sitting where I’m sitting.’ (Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2002)
The reports moreover reflected the notion that ‘mothering takes priority over all other work and is the ultimate source of fulfillment for women’ (Enos, 2001: 23). Significantly, there was not a single quote from an incarcerated father that described a child as the father’s reason to live.
The equation of maternal incarceration with child incarceration
Although accounts of both maternal and paternal incarceration contained themes regarding the negative effects of parental incarceration on children as described earlier, a common theme that appeared in 13 percent of the articles on incarcerated women in particular was that of maternal incarceration as child incarceration. This refers to the manner in which newspaper accounts equated a mother’s incarceration with a child being forced to ‘do time’ with his/her mother. Repeatedly, articles contained quotes from incarcerated mothers conveying how they felt that their children were being imprisoned with them. While clearly speaking metaphorically, it is important to note that while articles on inmate fathers spoke factually of the higher risks of delinquency, poor school performance, and so on borne by children of incarcerated fathers, only one article on incarcerated fathers presented the children as ‘doing time’ with the fathers. In contrast, the notion of maternal incarceration as child incarceration is captured by the following quote: ‘We have a roof over our heads’, Jones [an inmate mother] said as she looked up at the ceiling of the small interview room inside the Shakopee prison. ‘We have three meals. We have stable hours. It’s our kids who are doing the time.’ (Saint Paul Pioneer Press, 20 September 2000)
In her study on the mothering practices of inmate mothers, Enos (2001) found that incarcerated women emphasized their biological connection to their children, arguing that legally mandated separations did not interfere with their motherhood identity although they disrupted the mothers’ ability to be closely involved in their children’s lives. In Haney and March’s (2003) terms, then, they defined motherhood by focusing on form over function, in spite of the recognition that their children were more likely to consider their current caregiver as their ‘mother’. The equation of maternal incarceration with child incarceration is consistent with Enos’ findings regarding inmate mothers’ belief in the strength and intimacy of the mother–child bond.
Prison as salvation
Finally, related to the presentation of incarcerated mothers’ children as their ‘reason to live’, five newspaper reports of mothers in prison included quotations from inmate mothers who expressed gratitude for their time in prison. The women often spoke of prison as a ‘turning point’ in their lives, as the following quotation indicates: I’ve learned my lesson and I’m not coming back here. (Contra Costa Times, 8 May 2005)
The portrayal of inmate mothers as remorseful and even grateful for their incarceration may reflect a less punitive stance on maternal incarceration; but it also may be interpreted as a form of ‘soft’ social control. This form of control relies less on conveying the message that women be confined or punished (which scholars have noted has often been the response to offending mothers (Haney, 2010; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005)) and more on problematizing their mothering practices to highlight these mothers’ departure from normative parenting practices. The ‘offending mothers’ in Haney’s (2010) study exemplify how although control of ‘deviant’ mothers often involves direct and formal punishment, it also comes in the form of ‘softer’ approaches that push women to reassess their attitudes toward parenting, children, and their lives generally. While the mothers in Haney’s study were all incarcerated, they were also exposed – and expected to conform – to discourses that attempted to alter their worldview and attitude toward their roles as mothers. One of the institutions in Haney’s (2010: 116) study, for example, was geared toward changing ‘women’s minds, bodies, and souls’.
The newspaper reports’ emphasis on the benefits of incarceration to the inmate mothers’ mental and social well-being may thus reflect softer social control techniques rather than sympathy for these women. Indeed, there were few quotations from inmate mothers highlighting the negative elements of the prison environment that scholars on women’s incarceration have long documented (Enos, 2001; Heffernan, 1972; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005; Owen, 1998). To the extent that these elements were described at all in the reports, they were only used to highlight the difficulties of parenting, rather than the difficulties faced by the women themselves, independent of their status as mothers. While sympathetic on the surface, therefore, the portrayal of incarcerated mothers as grateful for the incarceration event – and the absence of condemnation of these mothers – reflects the reproduction of a mothering discourse because they present inmate mothers as attempting to perform the mothering role ‘correctly’ while in prison. Implicit in this message is that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways of mothering, and that incarceration attunes women to appropriate mothering practices that they were failing to abide by prior to their incarceration. This can be seen in the following quotation: ‘Coming here was a blessing. I could have ended up dead’, she said. ‘I had to better myself in here for him [the inmate’s son]’. (Boston Globe, 28 August 2008)
Themes in accounts of paternal incarceration
Fathers as serious criminals
Consistent with Reiner’s (2002) conclusion that offending in the media is portrayed as a predominantly male activity, newspaper accounts of inmate fathers made reference to serious crimes that the men were convicted of very frequently (in 33 percent of the articles). When incarcerated mothers’ crimes were described, over 50 percent of the references were about child-related crimes such as abuse and neglect. The following quotes exemplify this: Lancaster, Ohio – A 28-year-old mother of three said in court yesterday that she didn’t know why she put her 2-year old son in an alley trash bin on a 95-degree day, closed the lid and left him there. (Columbus Dispatch, 15 December 2007) Kimu Parker, 37, was charged with three counts of child abuse after her three children were found malnourished and emaciated. (Arizona Republic, 3 August 2007) DePaul Holloway [an inmate father], of the East Side, was found guilty of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery last week in a case tried in Franklin County Common Pleas Court before Judge Deborah P. O’Neill. The nine-woman, three-man jury now is to recommend Holloway be sentenced to die, or be sent to prison for life without a chance for parole for either 20 or 30 years. He was convicted of killing Frank Roilton in November 1995 and dumping his body in a trash container. (Columbus Dispatch, 20 February 1997) Rutledge [the inmate] was convicted Nov. 27, 1999, in circuit court in the death of Tammy Williamson, the mother of his twin children. She was shot in the head at her sister’s home in Little Rock on Sept. 1, 1998, with a .32-caliber pistol four days after Rutledge got out of state prison on parole after serving time for robbery, breaking and entering, and theft. (Arkansas-Democrat Gazette, 15 June 2001)
Fathers as financial supporters
Unlike accounts of incarcerated mothers, articles about inmate fathers emphasized their roles as financial supporters of their children and wives. Descriptions of prison programs aimed at teaching inmate fathers parenting skills highlighted the need for fathers to pay child support, and they emphasized the financial difficulties that the mothers of incarcerated men’s children faced in trying to support their children without the assistance of the men. Haney and March (2003) have argued that policy makers were more likely than low-income women to view financial support as evidence of fathering. Newspaper accounts similarly appear to distinguish between the nurturing and close involvement that is evidence of a mother–child bond and the functional financial support that indicates that fathers are committed to their children. The following quotations from newspaper accounts demonstrate the positioning of incarcerated fathers in the role of financial supporter, even while incarcerated: The [incarcerated] father was originally ordered to pay $390 per month in child support. He was later charged with sexual assault. He pled guilty and was sentenced to two to 10 years in prison. His employer also fired him upon learning of his conviction. The father argued he should no longer have to pay child support. The court disagreed. (Lawyers Weekly USA, 3 December 2007) A father who is serving time in jail has asked for help to give his three young sons and his fiancé a bright holiday. ‘I wish very much for them to have a pleasant Christmas’, the man writes. ‘Due to my stupidity and foolish decision making, I am unable to assist in that process.’ (Richmond Times Dispatch, 18 December 1997) Among the applicants to the Bruce Roberts Toy Fund this year are at least three mothers whose husbands or boyfriends are incarcerated. They face serious issues, including financial hardship and social stigma. ‘My paycheck doesn’t even cover the bills. I don’t have any money to get him a present’, the mother in Cumberland County said. ‘To me, this is the age that he really expects Santa Claus.’ (Portland Press Herald, 7 December 2007) ‘For years, I’ve felt we should begin to pay attention to the father–child relationship’, Basler [a Reverend] said. ‘There’s been a lot of consciousness and concern for the incarcerated mother and her children, and although that’s important, the fatherhood role is important, too. We’ve largely overlooked that as a community.’ (The Oklahoman, 20 November 2011)
Discussion
In this article, I sought to explore the extent to which newspaper portrayals of inmate parents are gendered. In doing so, I aimed to explore the extent to which these portrayals are consistent with scholarly literature on both incarcerated mothers and fathers and the media’s role in the social construction of crime and deviance. As prior research (Dowler et al., 2006; Gado, 2007) would predict, gender is a significant ‘ingredient’ of newspaper accounts regarding incarcerated mothers and fathers. While research on crime waves and moral panics (Cohen, 1972; Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005; Surette, 1994) might also suggest that media accounts of offenders – and women offenders in particular – would portray inmates in ways that bred fear and concern about levels of crime in the US however, the newspaper articles analyzed in this study portray an altogether different image of prisoners. In fact, there are ways in which newspaper accounts of inmate parents convey messages that are remarkably similar to those conveyed by the scholarly literature on parental incarceration.
Contrary to evidence that suggests that the media sensationalize crime in a way that breeds public rejection of offenders, the articles in this study reflected crucial facts about incarceration and offending that scholars have repeatedly made note of in the criminological literature. For example, the vast majority of articles made note of the drastic growth of the prison population in recent decades, highlighting how the incarceration boom has disproportionately affected female offenders, many of whom have drug problems. The absence of a strong moral panic theme, especially in the context of inmate mothers, is theoretically interesting because of extensive prior literature positing that the media are responsible for initiating and sustaining widespread panics about crime generally (Cohen, 1972) and offending mothers in particular (Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005). Rather than portraying women’s offending as requiring urgent and strict control as researchers (Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005) have documented, the newspaper accounts analyzed in this study portray women offenders as social scientists have since the era of mass incarceration began: as disadvantaged women facing even greater challenges because of their incarceration. The finding that women view prison as a ‘blessing’, however, must be interpreted both cautiously and critically. While it is possible that this finding reflects a more lenient, informed, and sensitive stance towards the issue of incarcerated mothers, it may also reflect the media’s attitude toward prison and the benefits that incarceration presents to inmate mothers. The absence of a discussion of the difficulties that the prison environment poses to incarcerated women, for example, raises the possibility that in highlighting the positive elements of incarceration, the newspapers are in fact utilizing a soft control technique that conveys why offending mothers ought to go to prison. The reports thus did not contain the element of moral panics about unfit mothers that might be expected based on prior research (Kruttschnitt and Gartner, 2005); but interpreted through a lens that views the media as an ideological apparatus of the state, portrayals of inmate mothers as grateful for the experience of incarceration is consistent with the reproduction of dominant state ideologies that extol the benefits of incarceration and more stringent punishment.
Inmate mothers were portrayed as grateful for the opportunity presented to them through the incarceration event to do mothering ‘right’, and children were described as the source of inmate mothers’ sense of purpose and hope. The fact that these elements were absent in the accounts of incarcerated fathers reveals the extent to which newspaper reports on inmate mothers reflect and reproduce a mothering discourse that places children at the center of mothers’ lives, even when these mothers are faced with tremendous social and economic difficulties (Enos, 2001). The lack of evidence of moral panic and condemnation for inmate parents thus does not undermine the argument that the media play an ideological role in furthering the interests of dominant groups by reproducing discourses regarding appropriate parenting. To the contrary, the ‘soft control’ technique of portraying inmate mothers as grateful for their incarceration provides support for the argument that the media play an ideological role in the reproduction of family discourses, despite the absence of a moral panic theme.
Griffith and Smith (1987: 97) have noted that ‘exposure to guilt, invidious comparisons, and anxiety’ are all hazards for mothers participating in the mothering discourse. The newspaper accounts of inmate mothers included quotations from inmates that contained all these negative emotional elements. It must be noted again, however, that it is impossible to conclude whether the mothers whose quotations appear in newspaper reports are actually conforming to a mothering discourse or if their quotations are being applied to fit this discourse by authors of newspaper reports. The latter is an especially salient possibility given the literature reviewed on the media as an institution that serves the ideological purposes of the state. Especially within the context of rising incarceration rates, the reports’ portrayal of incarcerated mothers as attempting to conform to dominant parenting ideologies – often described as a result of incarceration – may be seen as a means to justifying the state’s increasingly punitive nature. What can be concluded is that everyday representations of mothering from behind bars contain elements of a discourse that problematizes the mothering practices of women who fall outside the boundaries of the standard North American family unit (Enos, 2001).
Of prime importance, however, is the fact that these representations did not pathologize inmate mothers’ practices; instead, newspaper reports fit these mothers into the framework of the discourse by revealing how they attempt to perform mothering like women in conventional society. Rather than condemning mothers for being unable to mother conventionally, therefore, the newspaper accounts reflect the problematic nature of non-traditional mothering by describing the psychological difficulties that inmate mothers and their children face. In spite of the absence of strong condemnation, by portraying the inmate mothers as relieved about their incarceration due to their belief that it helps them mother more effectively, the findings of this study are consistent with prior literature that concludes that disadvantaged women and families are more likely to be subjected to ideological programming than are families that conform to the SNAF model (Barton, 2005; Cruikshank, 1999; Haney, 2010). The media’s ideological role is further emphasized, therefore, by the extent to which non-traditional mothering was presented as problematic for both mothers and children.
The articles on incarcerated fathers did reference the father–child bond, but there were few emotion-laden descriptions of fathers expressing the anguish of being unable to father. Instead, these articles highlighted efforts to encourage fathers to provide financial support for their families while incarcerated and thereafter. Although accounts of both inmate mothers and fathers thus described in detail the efforts required to maintain a relationship with children on the outside, reports on inmate mothers contained evidence of a mothering discourse that had no analogy in accounts of inmate fathers. Similarly, articles on incarcerated fathers contained repeated messages that fathers’ responsibility was financial support, an element entirely absent from accounts of incarcerated mothers. In fact, consistent with the critiques of media scholars, women’s economic roles were downplayed, and they were consistently presented in roles that some scholars (Barak, 1995) would consider subordinate to men: as wives, mothers, and victims.
The findings in this study are consistent with Haney and March’s (2003) conclusion about official discourses regarding paternal identity: the newspaper reports, like the policy makers in Haney and March’s study, presented a father’s ability to financially support his child as evidence of adequate fathering. Despite this, there is also evidence that definitions of fatherhood have changed in the way that Haney and March (2003) note. Although lacking in strong emotional content, the reports did in fact frequently reference (both implicitly and explicitly) the father–child bond, with descriptions of fathers reading to their daughters and organization heads discussing the importance of taking the father–child relationship as seriously as the mother–child one. There is thus support for what Haney and March have referred to as a preference for father function over form, with newspaper representations depicting fathers as being actively engaged and interested in their children’s lives. Nevertheless, definitions of fathering continue to rest on their fathers’ role as financial supporters, as predicted by Smith’s account of the standard North American family unit, even when fathers are incarcerated. The findings pertaining to incarcerated fathers are even better understood when viewed through a lens that highlights its role as the ideological counterpart to the state’s more repressive institutions. From such a perspective, it is unsurprising that the reports were more likely to portray fatherhood in terms that were similar to the state actors in Haney and March’s (2003) study. Similarly, through their reproduction of gender ideologies, the media present inmate fathers in the more aggressive roles of perpetrator and abuser (hence the emphasis on fathers’ serious crime), which simultaneously serves to depict these fathers as lacking in emotional attachment to their children and families. The same depictions of inmate mothers’ parenting practices as ‘deviant’ thus portray fathers as criminals, thereby limiting their role in their children’s lives to that of a financial – rather than emotional or social –supporter.
Conclusion and future research
This study has shown that newspaper representations of inmate mothers and fathers differ from one another in several meaningful ways. Future research should further disentangle the role of the media in presentations of incarcerated parents. For example, scholars may explore how incarcerated parents are portrayed on television shows and/or television news, and whether gender differences emerge in these media outlets.
The findings here also suggest that inmate mothers are not excluded from a mothering discourse that positions children as the most important feature of mothers’ lives. Despite this, notably absent in this study was the condemnation for offending parents (and mothers in particular) that might be expected based on prior research. As discussed, however, the lack of condemnation and evidence of moral panic should be interpreted critically, and future research may be geared toward shifting attention away from the media’s role in creating and sustaining moral panics about crime and prisoners to understanding the media’s role in asserting ‘soft’ or informal social control of incarcerated parents through the communication of dominant family ideologies that inmate parents do not necessarily conform to. The findings of this study moreover suggest that, to understand fully the role of the media in portrayals of incarcerated parents, the ideological nature of the media must be critically examined. Future research may extend the findings of this study to examine whether and how the parenting practices of other parents who do not conform to dominant family ideologies (e.g. drug-addicted mothers, parents on probation/parole, etc.) are similarly portrayed as problematic.
Finally, since Doyle (2006) has warned criminologists not to assume that audiences passively internalize media messages, researchers should broaden examinations of the influence of media to assess the internalization of messages regarding prisoners. The current state of research on women offenders suggests that the relationship between media and crime – especially with regard to female offenders – is extremely complex, with media accounts containing messages that focus on demands for the social control of drug-addicted mothers to an apparent awareness of how difficult the lives of inmate parents (and mothers in particular) can be. Future research should thus further disentangle the relationship between media and offending, paying special attention to female offenders.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I thank Diane Felmlee and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.